Readings on software

This is a list of things on software I think are worth readings / watching. I shared a version of this with some people at work, but saving it here for posterity.

Reading List

• The Grug Brained Developer - This covers so many topics of software development in an unpretentious and entertaining way, what more could you want
  • Code is Cheap(er) - Bonus from the same author (Carson Gross) on why complexity still very bad in the AI era
• Cognitive load is what matters - One of the best posts on cognitive load, in case you can't tell I think writing code that is easy to understand is extremely important
• Nobody knows how large software products work - Written by a principal at Github who I don't always agree with, but this one is just facts and might help you out if you work at a large company
• You must read at least one book to ride - On the unreasonable effectiveness of reading one good book
  • I should read more programming books myself, but can personally recommend The Pragmatic Programmer and A Philosophy of Software Design
• Don't DRY Your Code Prematurely - The Google Testing Blog has a ton of great and easily digestible content and not DRYing prematurely is great advice that isn't followed enough
• It's rude to show AI output to people - Not strictly about software at all, but it is one of the million AI takes that has stuck with me
• TDD, Where Did It All Go Wrong - This talk really solidified how I think about testing generally
• Hammock Driven Development - Rich Hickey (the creator of Clojure among other things) has many excellent talks, this one on solving deep engineering problems is a great start

Writing things yourself is also good

Something I learned far too late is that writing yourself is a great way to think through things more deeply and it's definitely ok to be writing about things that are new to you, sometimes that is actually when you are best placed to explain it to someone else.

And hey you are reading this on my website so I made some progress on that I guess.